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Ran Right Past It

Ran Right Past It

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Yesterday was National Running Day. Since this fact escaped my notice until after posting time, I’m celebrating it now.

In the last year I’ve become more of a runner in the suburbs than a walker in the suburbs. This has its good points and its bad points. In the plus column, I exercise a little more rigorously and finish a little more quickly.

In the negative column, well, I’m not walking. And walking sets the brain to spinning. It’s about the pace. The clip-clop instead of plod-plod. It’s about exerting one’s self enough to jostle the gray matter — but not so much that huffing and puffing is all I do. Walking gives me a chance to notice things; with jogging I might run right past them.

The best days are when there’s time for a run and a walk.  One for the body and one for the soul.

Fern Forest Floor

Fern Forest Floor

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A walk yesterday in the late afternoon. Copper and I ran down Folkstone Drive, then ducked into the woods. It was cool and quiet there, and what struck me first was the filtered light. This is a second-growth forest, maybe third- or fourth (if that’s possible). The oaks are 70 to 80 feet or taller, and the birch and hickories and other trees in the canopy shade the smaller plants, give them a vaulted ceiling beneath which to grow.

I take off my sunglasses, hold them in my leash hand. The colors are even more intense now — the dark greens of the holly and the brilliant hues of the newly unfurled ferns. In places the woods are carpeted with ferns. It’s a fern forest floor.

I look more carefully at the delicate fronds, watch them as they wave slightly in the breeze. There is something satisfyingly primordial about ferns, something soothing in their longevity on this planet. They thrive in the indirect light.

As I think of writing about ferns today, Copper tugs at his leash. The ferns are the height of his sturdy little shoulders; he swishes through them when he ventures off the path.

Bartholdi Fountain

Bartholdi Fountain

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A noontime walk in the city yesterday took me to Bartholdi Fountain. It didn’t look like this, of course. It was daylight and water droplets sparkled in the sun. Peonies hung their heads in the park. Creamy roses and colorful columbines competed for attention.

The bounty of bloom was an artless companion to the fountain, which is elegant, classical. Created by Frederic Bartholdi before he made the Statue of Liberty, it was first displayed at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876 and later sold to the U.S. Congress for $6,000, half the asking price.

I learned these facts today on Wikipedia. But yesterday, when I was walking, what struck me most was the energy of the scene. The water shooting, gushing, cascading. Nearby office workers strolling, checking their phones, rocking in the chairs that offer prime viewing spots (and maybe a little fountain spray). And taking in all of this at my own pace, which is a bit of a whirl, especially when I’m trying to walk halfway down the mall and back.

The Bartholdi Fountain made me want to sit down and rock for a while. Maybe I’ll do that next time.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

The Child in Spring

The Child in Spring

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“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.”      —  George Eliot

I often think of these words, especially this time of year. In mid-May, childhood runs rampant. Kids frolic at the bus stop, forgo homework to dash outside the minute they get home from school. After dinner they ride bikes and scooters around the cul-de-sac. The end of the school year dangles tantalizingly in the future. It won’t be long now.

I caught this excitement the other day on a walk through the neighborhood. I inhaled it in the aroma of cut grass, felt it in the sun on my face. So many memories as I amble. Not even memories, but deeper than that. Sensory impressions. A whiff of juniper. The musty odor of a storm drain.

We forget how close to the ground we were in those days, how the earth rose up to meet us then with all its sounds and scents. But because it did, I can stroll through the world now with my middle-aged self — and the whole world comes alive again.

West Side Story

West Side Story

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I used to live in the West Village. Now I’m a visitor here. It’s taken a while to adjust to this fact. “A while” is an understatement. We’re talking more than two decades now!

It must be the timelessness of the place, the winding streets that began, they say, with cow paths. The bohemian flavor that lingers amidst the wealth and Starbucks.

But it’s not just the timelessness that draws me back. It’s the new features, like Hudson River Park, a ribbon of asphalt and greenery that runs from 59th Street to the Battery. To stroll or bike here is to be of the city but not in it. It’s to be moving as the river flows, as the city itself moves, poetry in motion.

Every time I visit, I add another chapter to my own West Side Story.

Cut-Through

Cut-Through

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A couple days ago, I parked and walked on Lane Allen, a hilly road I’ve grown fond of on recent visits to Lexington. It has a tree-canopied section — the most treacherous of all, of course, no shoulder, no sidewalk but on the north end some trampled grass, the pedestrian’s makeshift sidewalk.

On this particular walk I turned and looked behind me, back to Parker’s Mill, an even hillier, sidewalk-less road, and noticed that the field behind St. Raphael Church abutted property I thought was along my usual route.

Yesterday I tested the theory. This involved tiptoeing through a backyard, scaling a fence, crossing a  creek and almost entering a horse pasture by mistake. But eventually I found my way to the church property (they won’t mind trespassing, I reasoned) and over to Lane Allen.

 It was a small discovery, but it made me unreasonably happy. Now I can take a beautiful walk without driving to it. Now I know the real lay of the land.  I’m that much closer to being a walker in this suburb.

Going Solo

Going Solo

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An early walk this morning, and along the path I kept bumping into groups of runners. Each cluster of three or four would ask me if others were up ahead. I smiled and pointed behind me. Yes, they were all there, the pack.

I was glad to be of help — but even happier that I was running alone and not with others.

I belong to a family, a workplace, a church, a book group, a writer’s group and a tap dance class. But organized running is not for me.

Trail time is for thinking, listening to music, putting the day into perspective

And these are tasks best performed alone.

When Walking Was King

When Walking Was King

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I had another blog topic rattling around in my head this morning, something about March coming in and going out like a lion, when I read an op-ed in today’s Washington Post. It’s the opening of baseball season, America’s national pastime, wrote Matthew Algeo, but long ago, fans gathered to watch another sport, competitive walking.

It was called pedestrianism, and it involved people walking around a dirt track for six days at a time. The races lasted for 144 hours (with participants napping on cots), included heavy wagering and winners (the celebrity athletes of their day) could take home as much as $425, 000 (in today’s currency).

At first, I checked my calendar. Could this be an April
Fools joke? But no, it’s still March. And yes, pedestrianism was a genuine phenomenon.

The author’s point was cautionary: Pedestrianism was in part done in by doping scandals. At one time in our nation’s history no one could have predicted that it wouldn’t have remained the nation’s pastime forever.

But I take something different from the piece. For a walker in the suburbs, it’s funny proof of how once walking was king.


(Wikipedia: An 1836 illustration of a “Walking Wager”, from Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, by Anonymous, Philadelphia.)

Walking West

Walking West

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Long day at the office and the best way to unwind: walking an extra mile to Metro through the streets of D.C.

I’d stayed so long that I strode right into the setting sun. E Street was a swath of light, and the faces of the people marching toward me were shadowed spheres.

It was a strange way to see the world, as if my direction were the only direction. I thought briefly of skipping a block north, finding another route, but quickly realized the sun angle would be the same.

I was walking west, going home. It was the only way to go.

Free Hour

Free Hour

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A free hour, from 6-7 last evening, and the trail beckoned. The sun was low in the sky and the evening was soft and warm. Cyclists whizzed by me and my legs felt heavy and tired, so I kept to the right and warmed up slowly. 

Ten minutes in and I was flying. Well, not really. But it felt that way. It’s been such a long, cold winter. And to be dressed only in one layer, moving at my own pace down a path in the suburbs, seemed perfection to me then.

Maybe it was runner’s high or maybe it was spring fever — and it certainly had something to do with daylight savings time. But whatever it was, I was not alone.

Everyone I saw — from the ferociously helmeted bikers to the boxy guy padding along in thin sandals — seemed to feel the same way.